It looked like an oxymoron could contain a pun! The important thing was that I already had almost half of what I needed. I figured the rest would be easy.

After cruising all the aisles several times without finding anything else, I decided to hunt around town for the other four. I could always come back to the market later.

On the way out, I ran into Benedict.

“Hey, what are you doing with that?” he asked, pointing to the camera.

“When someone lens you a camera, you have to snap up the offer,” I said.

“Logan, this is getting ridiculous,” said Benedict.

“Sorry. Wait,” I said. “I’ll give you a click explanation.”

Maybe Benedict could help me. I told him what an oxymoron was and told him I needed to find four more of them for a project I was working on. I didn’t say anything about the professor or about being punished. I didn’t think he’d believe that part. The whole time I talked, the puns kept coming, but Benedict seemed to understand what I needed.

“I know,” he said. “Don’t try to think up the whole thing at once. First, you need to just think of words that describe stuff,” he said.

“Yeah.Adjectives,”I told him, remembering what I’d learned in language arts. I had to admit Benedict’s idea was a good one. If I started with the right first word, it might make it easier to come up with a whole oxymoron. Benedict was pretty smart sometimes, even if he did think football was better than baseball.

Benedict nodded. “I know some. Large, small, tiny, sharp, light.”

“Hey, light. That’s a bright idea,” I said. I realized light meant two things. It meant “bright,” but it also meant “not heavy.” Maybe we could find an oxymoron using light.

“I know just where to look,” Benedict said, snapping his fingers. He ran off. I followed him down the street to the lamp store.

“Good thinking,” I said. “Watt a delightful idea.”

Benedict groaned. “You’ll have to go into the lamp shop by yourself,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“The last time I was in there, they told me not to come back.”

I pushed open the door.

“Be careful,” Benedict said. “Most of the stuff they sell breaks real easily.”

I walked inside, staying right in the middle of the aisles, as far as possible from the glass. I saw dozens of lamps with all sorts of different shades. I looked for dim lights or dull lights, but no oxymorons leaped out at me. I didn’t even see anything that could be a heavy light.

I was about to give up when I realized I’d been staring at an answer the whole time. “Light shade!” I shouted. Since a shade blocks light, I figured light was the opposite of shade. I raised the camera and pointed it at a wall of different kinds of lampshades.